They've been coming for torrentors for 15+ years. How's that fight going?

And somehow against all odds, the scene still seems to be hanging on despite tons of FBI arrests in the 2000's and zero profit motive.

They could for years do something about it. I.e. start offering DRM-free video for sale. They never cared, so the conclusion is that they don't want to do anything proper about it, they will only spread the DRM paranoia.

To be fair, iTunes and Amazon do/did offer DRM-free for some music selections.

I think blaming the distributors is misplacing the blame. The problem is that the distributors don't have the legal right to do that without contractual buy-in from content owners who fear that their golden goose will dry up if content is offered without DRM or if digital content can be kept and used in perpetuity by consumers.

Indeed, greedy and out of touch Hollywood execs are to blame. But as a consumer, we shouldn't really care.

Amazon has never sold DRM'd digital music and Apple has sold all of its music DRM free for over a decade.

Thanks for the correction. Even as I was typing it, I doubted my own memory.

Music yes, and you can still buy it DRM-free today. I'm talking about video specifically.

HBO has been monitoring torrents for a long time and sending letters to ISPs. VPNs and seed boxes get around this.

Not everybody is in DMCA jurisdiction. Maximum liability in Canada is something like $5000, which makes it uneconomical for a copyright owner to actually send a lawyer to court to litigate against a person who wants to defend themselves.

I'm not sure what you are saying, no one implied everyone was in the reach of HBO. The parent was saying HBO was going to go after torrenters in the future, but they have been doing it for years.

I guess what I'm saying is that inevitably in these sorts of discussions, about legal repercussions, the assumption is that the torrenters are physically located in the US 50 states.

No one assumed that here, the parent said HBO would go after torrenters in the future and they have been for a long time already.

In fact, HBO is perhaps the most aggressive monitoring/enforcement of all content-creators. They are very, very proactive.